The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete vs Ulysses
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
10,693words between them — 43 min of it
The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete is longer — 275,100 words against 264,407 for Ulysses, a difference of 10,693 words or about 43 min of extra reading. The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete is the harder read, at grade 13.6 against 5.4.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete | Ulysses | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Rousseau, Jean-Jacques | Joyce, James |
| Words | 275,100 | 264,407 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 18h 20m | 17h 38m |
| Unique words | 12,416 | 29,432 |
| Sentences | 8,914 | 23,455 |
| Average sentence length | 30.9 words | 11.3 words |
| Reading grade | 13.6 | 5.4 |
| Reading ease | 52.2 | 76.6 |
| Long words | 11.4% | 8.9% |
Highlighted cells are the larger figure — except reading ease, where higher means easier.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions, same counting rule·REVIEWED JUL 2026
How this is worked out
- Both texts are counted the same way, from the same source, with Gutenberg's header and licence footer struck first.
- The gap is stated in words and then in time at 250 words a minute — the rate is printed because a duration without one cannot be checked.
- Difficulty is compared on Flesch–Kincaid grade, which reads sentence and word length only. It cannot see irony or dialect, so treat it as a measure of surface, not of effort.
gap = |275,100 − 264,407| = 10,693 words 10,693 ÷ 250 wpm = 43 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete or Ulysses?
The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete is longer — 275,100 words against 264,407 for Ulysses, a difference of 10,693 words or about 43 min of extra reading. The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete is the harder read, at grade 13.6 against 5.4.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 3913 and no. 4300 — and from no other source. Neither book’s text is set on this site.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·US public domain·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Word counts and reading levels are computed from a specific public-domain edition and will differ from other editions and from other counting methods — see the method page.
